Cloning and Retouching

The Clone Stamp, the Spot Healing and the Paintbrush allow to improve considerably the photos, removing unwanted elements and improving the background. It is not easy to use well these instruments - if you are not precise and careful with there retouchings, it is very easy to create artefacts and unnatural images. Other than that, the "ethic" of cloning is controversial - some photographers use it a lot, other prefers to avoid it. Personally, I think that there is nothing wrong in improving the background or eliminating a distracting elements, as far as the natural history value of the photo is not compromised - eliminating a stick or adding some room in front to improve the composition is ok, while I'd never do retouches that falsify the subject (e.g. adding a sixth gill to a fish). This page describes the techniques and use most often for my photos.

Clone, Spot Healing and other tools

The Clone tool and the Spot Healing allows to remove unwanted objects from the photo: you can use these tools for simple retouchings, as removing the dust spots from background, or for complex operations to eliminate unpleasing element behind or even in front of the subject.  The crops on the left show an example of photo that can be improved with cloning. This Cettia cetti (Cetti's Warbler) was hidden between the reeds: when he moved in a more open areas for few seconds, I managed to grab a shot. The photo is quite good, but it can be improved: even though it is not possible to get a perfectly clean background, nor to remove the largest sticks in front of the subject (as the one in front of the tail), you can improve the background and remove the small sticks. In the original photo, there was a small stick in front of the subject. If the stick had been in front of the eye, or other important areas, it wouldn't have been possible to remove it. Here, instead, the stick covers just an area with a quite uniform pattern of feathers. I selected the Clone Stamp tool and I've selected a brush slightly larger than the stick. The Hardness of the brush was set on 0%: when you use the Clone Stamp, it is essential to use very soft brushes, otherwise the cloning is pretty noticeable. Other than that, check that the "Aligned" box is sected, otherwise it is very easy to create artefacts (in this case, repeated patterns). With Alt + click I've selected the source (as close as possible to the stick, without touching it), then I moved the Clone tool above the stick. To get the best results, usually you have to select a source, clone away part of the distracting element, then select another source a clone again. In this case, the A-shaped stick requited two steps: first I cloned away the left portion, then I selected another source close to the right portion and I cloned away the rest of the stick. If you look really close, you can notice some small artefacts, but overall it looks pretty natural, and I doubt that you would tell that I used the Clone Stamp if you didn't saw the original crop. This is the key of cloning: you have to enhance the photo while mantaining a natural look. Cloning out the stick from the background was much easier - since the background is out of focus, there are much less patterns, and there are less oddies to create artefacts. When I want to remove an element from background, I use the Clone Stamp or the Paintbrush, or even both, as I did in this case. I removed the small stick from background with the Clone tool, but there was still a bright, out of focus reed into background that created a distracting highlight. I selected the Paintbrush, with a large soft brush and opacity 20%, and I painted on the bright area: even though I didn't remove it completely, I made it much more uniform, darker and less distracting. This techniques is essentially the same thing of the background improving technique described in the last paragraph. The Spot Healing is quite different from the Clone Stamp. You don't have to select a source: the Spot Healing create the detail from the surruounding areas. It is very useful when you have to remove small areas from an uniform background: I use it a lot when I have to remove dust spots from the sky or out of focus areas.

A crop from the original photo The crop after the retouch: the stick has been eliminated The entire photo after post-processing with Photoshop CS3

Adding canvas

When I photograph a landscape or a flower, I compose slowly and carelly the photo. But when the subject is a fast moving animal, as a bird in flight, it is very difficult to get a perfect composition. Usually, I try to frame the subject with a little more room all around than necessary, to be able to crop the photo to a perfect composition during post-processing. Nevertheless, working with a prime (the 600 f/4 L IS USM, my main wildlife lens), it may happen that the composition is too tight, and there is not enough room in front, behind, under or above the subject. If the background is quite uniform (e.g. a blue sky, or a very out of focus background), it is quite easy to recover the photo, adding some canvas where you need it.

The first step is to select the Crop Tool; set Width on 3 and Height on 2 (or whatever ratio you want), and leave empty the Resolution box. Now, crop the photo as you prefer - don't worry if you include some empty canvas, you will fill it with the background pattern in the next step. Once you have cropped the photo to the perfect composition, you have to full the empty canvas that you have included; there are various techniques, you can use the Clone Tool, the Brush Tool or both.
Usually, I prefer the Brush Tool, because it makes easier to avoid artefact as the repeated patterns typical of the Clone Tool. With the Eyedropper Tool, I select the same color of the background, then I select a quite large brush, and I set the Hardness on 0%: it is essential to use a very soft brush, to create a gradual, natural transition. Now, you just have to paint on the empty areas; if the background has some different shades of colors, you have to change the color of the brush to mimic the pattern of the natural background (use the Eyedropper to change the color of the brush, selecting the same colors of the background).

In the original image, there was too little room above and in front of the subject. But is it pretty easy to add canvas, when you have an uniform background: with more sky in front, the composition looks much more balanced.

Rember than you must never paint or clone directly on the photo; before "re-buiding" the canvas, you have to create a new layer, then you can paint of clone into this layer so, if you do something wrong, you can always come back to the original image by deleting the layer or a part of it. When you have finished, select and deselect the layer visibility, to check the retouch; when you are satisfied by the result, you can merge the two layers.

If the background is not complety smooth and out of focus, you have to use the Clone Tool; it works quite well for small areas, while it is difficult to fill large areas using cloning. When you create some canvas with the Clone Tool, I recommend to use a soft, large brush, and to pay much attention to avoid repeated patterns. If necessary, you can improve the result with a semi-transparent brush, to get a smoother, more uniform background, as described in the next paragraph.

Improving the background

A clean, uniform background is the ideal complement for the subject. When necessary, you can improve the background to create more separation from the subject and to eliminate distracting highlights or dark areas. I never use the Gaussian Blur, because it tends to give an artificial-looking result; instead, a good retouch with the Brush Tool allows to improve a lot the background while mantaining a natural look, if you don't exaggerate.

Original image	The photo during the processing	The final image

My tecnique is quite easy to understand, even though you need some patience, in particular if the subject has very irregular edges. I create a new layer, that I call "background improvement", where I'll apply the enhancements before applying them on the final image. Then, I select a very large Brush Tool (from 300 to 1000 pixels, depending by the image); I set Hardness on 0% and opaciti on a value between 20 and 40%. With the Eyedropper Tool, I select the color that I want to use from the background, then I click on the less pleasing areas of the background. In the example above, I selected the same green color of the wide out of focus areas of background, and I "painted" above the dark areas and above the light brown highlights. Usually, the areas where you paint should not disappear, you just have to make them more uniform, not completely uniform, otherwise they look artificial. It is essential to use always a very large, soft brush: you don't have to follow the borders of the subject, don't worry if you paint above it.

When you are satisfied by the results, apply a Reveal All mask (Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All). Select a small, hard brush, set the color on black and Opacity 100%, then "paint" on the areas of the subject that had been "colored" as a conseguence of the previous step. In the example, the heron has a very clear green cast created by the Paintbrush: it is necessary to delete the color from the subject, leaving it only on background. Using the back brush on the Reveal All mask, you can hide the colored areas on the subject. Paint on the subject until you have removed completely the color cast; pay a lot of attention to the edges, to get a natural result you must be very precise (in some cases, it is necessary to work at 300% magnification with 3-4 pixels wide brushes). Usually, it takes from five to fiveteen minutes to do a precise work, depending by the shape of the subject. If the subject has an extremely uneven shape, with a lot of fine detail, usually I avoid this technique of background enhancement, I like to post-process my photos but I don't want to go crazy spending hours on a single image ;-)

Indeed, if you are wondering why I bought a $8k lens while I can create pleasing backgrounds with Photoshop, the answer is simple...it is much, much easier to create a pleasing background in the field, using a very long lens and wide apertures, than creating the background with Photoshop ;-) But even with a 600 f/4, sometimes the background is not as smooth as I like, so when it is necessary I use this technique to enhance the photo.

When you have finished to remove the color cast from the subject, select and deselect the layer visibility, to check the result: if the effet looks too artificial, reduce the opacity of "background improvement" layer until the image looks natural. This is a very powerful technique, but it is essential to be very careful and precise; if you exaggerate the photo looks clearly retouched. It allows to make a clearly out of focus background even more uniform, but it does not allow to blur a sharp, in-focus background.

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